Romania's Niculescu and Olaru advances to Indian Wells women's doubles round of 16

Romanian tennis players Monica Niculescu and Raluca Olaru, qualified on Wednesday, in different pairs, for the round of 16 of the women's doubles event at the 9,035,428-USD BNP Paribas Open tournament in Indian Wells (California).

Monica Niculescu and US tennis player Abigail Spears surpassed the pair made up of Veronika Kudermetova (US)/Demi Schuurs (the Netherlands) in one hour and 18 minutes, with a scored of 6-4, 6-4.

Raluca Olaru and Croatian Darija Jurak defeated 4th seeds Nicole Melichar (US)/Kveta Peschke (the Czech Republic) after one hour and 26 minutes, with a score of 6-2, 4-6, 10-6.

Olaru and Jurak had defeated Melichar and Peschke last month in Dubai, in the round of 16, with a score of 7-6 (6), 7-6 (3).

The winning pairs secured cheques worth 30,060 US dollars and 120 WTA doubles points.

Niculescu and Spears will play the round of 16 against the winning pair of the event between Irina Begu/Mihaela Buzarnescu and 5th seeds Gabriella Dabrowski (Canada)/Yifan Xu (China), while Olaru and Jurak duo will face off the winning pair of the match between Eugenie Bouchard (Canada)/Sloane Stephens (US) and Kirsten Flipkens (Belgium)/Johanna Larsson (Sweden).